The Little Seed’s Magical Life by Alves Redol in the Light of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Challenges in the Portuguese Language Classroom in 2nd Cycle Education

Abstract

Considering the recurrent global conflicts and the continuous abuses of freedom that we repeatedly witness these days, reflecting on Human Rights and their implications is extremely important. Believing that the future of a society is built today, debating the topoi related to the mentioned theme in the school, boosting the critical thinking of the youngest, could be the seed for a more auspicious future. The study presented here aimed to understand how work with Human Rights can be operationalized in the 5th grade of school based on the work of Alves Redol. Using a case study, in which didactic sequences were implemented starting from literary texts and questionnaires were applied a priori and a posteriori, a discussion about rights and duties was promoted, often only studied in the Citizenship discipline, in an interdisciplinary approach in Portuguese class. The results of the investigation revealed that the subjects involved, through the pedagogical paths developed, not only appropriated the concept of Human Rights, being able to enumerate the rights present in the Universal Declaration and to recognize attitudes inherent to these principles, but also developed their literary competence, particularly at the reading level, critically analyzing the conduct of the characters in the texts in question in the light of Human Rights and starting to interpret deeply through making increasingly proficient inferences about Alves Redol texts.